Tamaruq

by E. J. Swift

  ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this,’ says Dien at last.

  ‘I didn’t expect it either.’

  ‘I can’t help thinking… that it’s my fault.’

  ‘If it’s your fault, then it’s my fault too. I was the one who suggested activating the signal. We sent a cry for help, not invasion.’

  ‘All my life I’ve dreamed of what might be out there. Do you have ground-dreams, Rechnov?’

  ‘Of course I do.’

  ‘There’s one I get over and over. It’s land, but there’s towers, just like in Osiris, with raft racks running between them even though there’s no water, not a drop in sight. I’m on the ground, and I’m running, following these footprints in the ground, golden footprints – and whoever made them, I know I’m trying to catch them up but I can’t, however fast I run, I can’t get a glimpse. I keep running, keep following those footprints. Until the city ends. And there’s this flower field, flowers as tall as me, taller. I can hear something crying inside. A horrible cry. I know I’m meant to go in, under the flowers, but I can’t. I’m too scared. And that’s where I wake up.’

  ‘You think it means something?’

  ‘That I’m scared to go in the fucking flower field? I don’t know. Fear, fear of something. That’s the usual explanation, isn’t it.’

  A minute passes before Dien speaks again.

  ‘I never told you this, Rechnov, but I used to want a kid, I really, desperately wanted a kid. And I got pregnant. But I couldn’t bring myself to go through with it, because all I could think was this kid was going to have the worst, the most shitty life, and I knew I couldn’t give her anything better. There was a choice, I thought, and this choice was irresponsible. So I had the operation – in the western hospital, obviously. Only something went wrong. And afterwards, they told me that was it. There wouldn’t be another chance.’

  She falls silent. Adelaide can hear her breathing, shallow but sharp, the breathing of someone trying not to cry. She gets up and crosses the room. Dien doesn’t resist when she puts an arm around her shoulders.

  ‘I’m not giving up, you know. Not this time. And you can’t either. My great-grandfather built an extraordinary city. I know there must be something here that we can use.’

  On the afternoon of the second day of occupation, unidentified strikes are launched against a Boreal submarine, killing two crew members, and at dusk the Boreal-conscripted skadi line up a dozen suspected perpetrators at the border and they bring out the Osirian execution tank. From the back of a subdued western crowd, Adelaide and Dien watch as the tank is filled and the suspects are drowned, pair by pair. When it’s done, the bodies are dropped into the sea. The Boreals forbid their recovery. The bodies float, at times apart, then jostled against one another by the motion of the waves, a head against a foot or a shoulder to a knee, and after a time the circling gulls descend and perch upon the dead and begin to open up holes.

  Not long after the gulls descend, one of the bodies disappears. No one sees what took it, but elsewhere there are sightings: a fin, passing through the city. A silken shadow below the surface. By the end of the day, all twelve bodies have gone.

  In the evening of the second day the Boreals announce an investigation into the purposeful concealment of the city. They introduce curfew. Those who break it are detained. Those who are suspected of having a role in the concealment of the city receive a knock on the door in the night. Some of them are witnessed to leave their homes and do not return.

  On the third day of occupation the city of Osiris signs an unconditional declaration of surrender. The signatories are Feodor Rechnov, City Councillor, and the Silverfish. After they have signed, Feodor Rechnov goes back to the Domain and does something he hasn’t done for a long time: sits at the bedside of his father, the Architect, and listens to the old man babbling in Siberian, not sentences, just fragments, although even if he were speaking in sentences Feodor Rechnov would not understand a word. He’s never spoken Siberian or tried to learn it. This is the new world. Now the old is shouldering in. He pours himself a glass of vintage raqua and downs it and pours another. A larger dose. He looks at it and considers forcing the contents down his father’s throat, this measure and another and another, until the babbling ceases and there is silence. He drinks the measure and pours another. He tells the old man, slowly and without sparing any detail, what has happened today. The Architect blinks, but does not acknowledge. It’s not our city any more, says Feodor. You hear me? We’ve lost it. He slams his glass against the table. You’ve lost it. The Architect blinks. Siberian words slip from his lips. His hands flutter at his sides. Feodor should have burned the old man in the tower with the rest of Operation Whitefly. It would have been a mercy.

  Later that day, by which time Feodor is very drunk, his bodyguard Goran comes to find him. There are people at the door, he says. Councillors. Shall I let them in? Feodor shakes his head. He pulls himself upright. Hears the old man’s ragged breathing. Still alive. Slowly he makes his way to the entrance of the Domain.

  There are ten of them. One of them is his younger son, Linus. He can see it in their faces before they speak. Cowards, the lot of them. He hasn’t represented their interests, they say. They had to release Linus Rechnov from an underwater cell. There’s been a vote. Feodor’s resignation papers are here. They’ll leave them with him. He knows the procedures.

  ‘Fuck you all,’ says Feodor Rechnov. And closes the door.

  At twenty hundred the Boreals sound an alarm for curfew. One by one, Osirian boats pull into deckings and their occupants retreat inside. In the City, the external lights of the rotating towers power down; there will be no patrons tonight. Somewhere below the surface, the shark glides silently between the city’s foundations, its nose tormented by competing scents. This one? Or this one? Where does it begin? Tellers link hands and murmur to one another: it’s here. It can’t be stopped. We said it was coming.

  When it begins it’s past curfew, and Adelaide is out on the waterways.

  A pulse of light appears in the sky over to the east. In its brief, fierce effulgence the city is visible for a moment: the western towers outlined against the clouded night sky, the shadow of other boats on the water, moving slowly, furtively, dreamily through the darkened waterways. The light vanishes, and the dull boom of an explosion echoes in its wake.

  Adelaide waits, unsettled by the strange display. Sounds that were barely audible before now register insistently. The murmur of boat motors, tuned discreetly low. An oar lifting and dropping in the water. The patter of feet, swift, over a raft rack. The west have turned off their lights, and the darkness brings with it the feeling of a silent consensus within the city, although of what and what it means remains to be resolved.

  As her eyes readjust, Adelaide senses the driver turn her head, away from the direction of the light.

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she answers.

  ‘The Boreals playing games?’

  ‘I can’t see why. Maybe it was one of ours?’

  ‘Maybe…’

  Adelaide can hear her own uncertainty reflected in the driver’s voice.

  ‘Are we going on?’ the driver asks. They are meant to collect Dien, who has been working at the hospital for the past twelve hours, before heading to another illicit meeting of western leaders. Adelaide hesitates. She doesn’t want to keep them waiting. But this – this is something new.

  ‘No. Head over that direction. Where the light was,’ she adds unnecessarily.

  The driver obeys. They switch course, gliding between the lightless western towers, easing past boats who are also breaking the curfew, their passing without acknowledgement, although Adelaide feels a surge of camaraderie with each fellow transgressor. The new regulations are easier to enforce in the City, where the glow of night-time towers and the guiding lights of the waterways lay malefactors bare. Westerners, accustomed to skulking, have the advantage in this transfigured Osiris.

  Adelaide
gnaws at the chapped skin of her lips. The light worries her. What was it and where did it come from? They know so little about the Boreals. Once again she thinks: there must be something Osiris, with all its ingenuity, can offer their invaders to make them go away. And if anyone would know, it would be Linus…

  She takes her scarab from her pocket and enters the code for her brother. She waits impatiently, but there’s still no signal.

  ‘Hell’s teeth,’ she mutters. Without communications, they have no hope. The Boreals know that, of course. The Boreals are not stupid. But then again, the Boreals have never had to live like westerners. That’s another advantage.

  They have just skirted the perimeter of market circle when another pulse illuminates the night. This time she counts: one, two. It vanishes. The light seemed closer to the city this time, and brighter.

  A boat moving down the waterway in the opposite direction alters its course and heads across to them. One of the two passengers leans over.

  ‘Hey, did you see that?’

  ‘We saw it. Hard to miss it.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘I don’t know—’

  ‘You’re heading that way?’

  ‘We’re going to take a look.’

  ‘We’ll come with you.’

  Adelaide directs her driver eastwards, taking a route near the edges of the western quarter, using the outermost towers to maintain their cover. The driver maintains a moderate speed, not dawdling, but not moving fast enough to warrant attention from any patrolling forces, Boreal or skadi. The other boat tails them. As they pass another tower, Adelaide feels a sudden anxiety to be as far as possible from the city’s architecture. At this moment, the sea feels like the safest place to be, despite the terror of the roaming shark who is already rumoured to have snatched several people from the deckings.

  As they near the border, a third, much closer light blooms in the sky, gleaming against the blanket of cloud cover. This time, Adelaide has a clearer sense of its origin. The light seems to emanate from a region outside the city, but within the perimeter of the ring-net.

  Again, the sound of an explosion follows the light, but there is no accompanying evidence of fire or smoke. What the hell is going on?

  ‘Take us outside the city,’ she says impatiently.

  ‘Silverfish, are you sure? The curfew—’

  ‘I need to see what’s going on. If we see skadi, we scarper.’

  ‘All right, all right… But don’t say I didn’t warn you.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  Cautiously, the driver eases the boat out from between two towers.

  ‘I’ve got your back,’ Adelaide assures her.

  Adelaide listens to the open waves ahead, but she cannot hear a single skadi patrol boat. The night is bound in the same muffled quiet that has defined the past few days.

  They skirt around the sweeping path of a searchlight and head directly south, tracing a course parallel to the border, moving out towards the southern side of the ring-net. As they clear the city’s grip, Adelaide has a view of not only the glimmering towers beyond the border, but also of the Boreal fleet, anchored to the east.

  ‘Bring us nearer to the border,’ she requests. The driver does so, and cuts the motor to idle. The boat rocks freely with the waves until the driver throws a hook, securing them to the mesh. Adelaide weaves her fingers into the border netting and pulls her face close until she can see through. She blinks, confused. Half of the Boreal fleet seem to have disappeared.

  ‘That’s weird…’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘I think they’ve moved, but it was so fast—’

  She waits, confused but expectant. Minutes pass.

  ‘See anything?’ asks the driver.

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Not a soul—’

  A pinpoint of light ejects from one of the Boreal submarines still visible and arrows away, quickly pursued by a second bolt. Moments pass, then a fourth flare, apparently reacting to the Boreal bolts, identifies a lone ship situated between the Boreal fleet and the ring-net.

  ‘There’s someone out there,’ breathes Adelaide.

  ‘Who? Who is it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Another ship. Not a submarine—’

  She is still watching, her face pressed against the ring-net, when the game changes. A missile from the outer ocean hurtles upwards and arcs across the sky. Adelaide doesn’t see where in Osiris it hits but she feels the impact as a physical shock. A white fireball blazes over the eastern side of the city, before a vast plume of smoke obscures Adelaide’s view of the fire.

  The aftershock ripples through the border. Adelaide and the driver can hear the wave before they see its approach – an ominous rushing, then the white tidal crest racing from east to west, directly towards the border—

  ‘Hold on!’ yells the driver.

  The wave slams into the border, drenching them instantaneously. The boat rocks violently and for a terrible moment Adelaide thinks they are going to capsize, the boat lurching in the wake of the wave, water slopping in the well, before it regains equilibrium.

  Adelaide hauls herself to her feet, spitting saltwater. She looks back east. She can see the glow of fire, red and sinister.

  ‘Help! Help over here!’

  The boat that was tailing them has not been so lucky. Adelaide can hear the two passengers splashing about in the water, trying to right their stricken craft.

  Her driver steers the boat in their direction while Adelaide grabs a bucket and starts to bail, already consumed with shivers. The douse of Tarctic water cuts to the bone. They reach the capsized boat and help the passengers on board their own.

  ‘Something touched me – in the water.’ The man’s voice is fraught with horror.

  ‘It must have been kelp—’

  ‘It didn’t feel like kelp—’

  ‘What the fuck was that, anyway?’

  ‘I saw a ship,’ says Adelaide. ‘I don’t think it was Boreal. I think it was attacking us.’

  They begin the precarious drive back, still bailing water, the boat riding dangerously low. To the east, the sky pulses with the light of now recurrent explosions. There is something about the play of the light that is eerily reminiscent of the aurora australis, something almost beautiful but far more deadly that transfixes everyone in the boat. Once again Adelaide tries to contact Linus. Once again, the signal is jammed.

  As they move back into the cover of the towers, she can see fragile, intermittent lights blinking on across the west. The deckings are crowded with westerners who have been drawn outside by the flares. The traffic on the waterways has doubled. Adelaide and the driver drop off their two passengers. They are reluctant to leave, begging Adelaide to keep them with her, but she has no notion where the night will take her, and cannot risk them being caught up in it. As they drive away from the tower she sees their faces, anxious, receding, swiftly swallowed up in the mass of other spectators.

  ‘The hospital,’ she instructs.

  They head on, back through the west. She hears footsteps running over the connecting bridges, voices shouting from tower to tower. Fragments of renegade o’dio broadcasts spill from open windows.

  ‘This is going to be a bad night,’ says the driver.

  ‘I know.’

  The restlessness is palpable. A mood that could turn so quickly and irreversibly to panic, and from panic to anarchy.

  She tries one more time to contact Linus and to her surprise she gets a connection.

  ‘Linus? Linus, are you there, can you hear me?’

  ‘Adelaide? Is that you?’

  His voice is faint and the signal is producing intermittent static.

  ‘Linus, what’s going on?’

  ‘Adelaide, I can’t—’

  ‘Linus!’ she shouts. ‘Hell’s teeth.’

  ‘Adelaide, where are you?’

  ‘I’m in the west, where else would I be?’

  ‘Good. Good, stay there—’ There’s a dela
y, and then he says. ‘They’re bombing us.’

  ‘Who? Who is it, Linus?’

  ‘The Tarcticans—’

  ‘Tarcticans? That’s who’s attacking us?’

  In the background of the call she can hear noises: frenzied voices, thudding feet.

  ‘Adelaide—’

  The sound of an explosion, shockingly loud. A scream. Then moments of silence.

  ‘Linus! Linus, are you still there?’

  She hits the scarab. A buzz in her ear and she hears his voice, quick and urgent.

  ‘Adelaide, there’s something I have to tell you, I should have told you. Vikram was on the expedition boat. He was on the boat—’

  ‘What?’

  The scarab falls abruptly silent. Frantically, Adelaide tries to reconnect, but the signal has now gone completely.

  ‘What did he say?’ asks the driver.

  ‘He said – he said it’s the Tarcticans.’

  But she is not thinking about the Tarcticans. She is thinking about what Linus just said. What she thought she heard him say—

  The driver is silent for a moment. ‘Tarctica,’ she says at last. Both a finality and a wonder in the tone. ‘I’ve had ground-dreams about that place.’

  Vikram was on the expedition boat. He was on the boat.

  That’s what she heard.

  ‘Are you all right?’ says the driver.

  Distantly, Adelaide hears herself reply.

  ‘I don’t think they’re here to rescue us.’

  ‘Doesn’t seem that way.’

  They reach the hospital in silence.

  ‘I should stay with the boat,’ says the driver.

  ‘I’ll be quick.’

  She hurries inside the tower, suddenly worried that Dien may not even be here, that she’s left already, ventured out into the night on her own, to investigate – that would be like Dien. The waiting area is rammed and the hospital staff look grim and harried. Adelaide scans those on duty. She can’t see Dien anywhere. She pushes through a set of doors into the area for emergency treatment. No one stops her. Patients are doubled up on beds with more laid out on the floor or propped against the walls. Finally she spots Dien, dressing a nasty-looking head wound on an elderly woman. Dien looks up as she approaches.